Terai, Duars, Darjeeling, the eastern Himalayan region and in the mangrove forests of Sundarbans of West Bengal offers the most surreal and fantastic floral collections.

One is able to understand the richness of floral diversity of West Bengal from the statistics that it contributes almost 12% of the total angiosperm diversity found all over India despite occupying only 2.7% of the area that India covers. The southern deltaic parts of West Bengal possesses a combination of more than 60 species of the Sunderban Mangrove ecosystem consisting of true mangroves, mangrove associates and obligate mangrove. This combination outnumbers the toal mangrove diversity that the rest of India has to offer.

Further south, in the lower alluvial plains of the Ganga and Mahananda in the districts of Malda, North and South Dinajpur, fresh water swamp forests of Barringtonia accutangala are seen. At the southern extremities, the estuaries of the Ganga system bear the tidal mangrove forests of Cenbps, Excoecarea, flhuophora, Avicennia Bruguiera, Lumnitzera, Xylocarpa, Heritiera and many other species with Nypa- palm brakes and Phoenix thickets in places. The south-western part of the State, which largely is an extension of the Chottanagpur plateau, has the Dry peninsular Sal Forests.

Ref: West Bengal Biodiversity Board and West Bengal Forest Development Authority